Les couvents des ordres mendiants et leur environnement à la fin du Moyen Âge : le Nord de la France et les anciens Pays-Bas méridionaux / / Panayota Volti.

• VerfasserIn: Volti, Panayota,
• Place / Publishing House: Paris, France : : CNRS Éditions,, 2003.
• Year of Publication: 2003
• Language: French
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (xl, 311 pages) :; illustrations (some colour), maps; digital, PDF file(s).

The mendicant orders, essential agents of the spirituality of the last centuries of the Middle Ages, are intimately linked to their inhabited universe: their convents. Based on their own structural, aesthetic and functional principles, these architectural complexes with a clearly polyvalent vocation, responding to the religious, community and intellectual activities of the religious as well as to the needs of the faithful, constituted the edifying counterpoint of the apostolic activity and the pattern of life of beggars. Deliberately settled in urban environments, they created decisive bridges with the outside world, thus opening up their establishments, which, because of their thoughtful establishment, were able to integrate and adapt dynamically in reception areas. The frequent foundations of the convents in the sensitive areas of the cities and the creation, in the churches and in the conventual buildings, of suitable spaces and architectural arrangements satisfied, sometimes even preceded, the spiritual aspirations, even social, of the flocks. This study, combining archaeological data with information provided by archives, historical sources and ancient graphic documents, embraces the female and male convents of the four main begging orders: Dominicans, Franciscans, Carmelites and Augustinians. Moreover, in the geographical area chosen, namely the north of France and the former Southern Netherlands, the conventual architecture had until then been little explored.